Beautiful Stranger

service. As strange as it was to admit, I quite relished the forced unplugging I had to endure now that I’d lost my bag. I’d be able to pick up a new phone that morning and could make do without a laptop for the rest of the week, but aside from missing my photos, it had been nice to disengage a little from the constant work calls.
    And then I noticed that, beside the bed, the light on my room phone was blinking red. Had I missed a call?
    Checking the side of it, I realized the ringer had been turned off. I lifted the receiver and hit the voice mail button.
    Will’s no-nonsense voice snapped through the line: “Max. Check the Post then call me ASAP. We have fires to put out back home.”

Seventeen
    Monday came crashing in with another summer storm and a sky so greenish blue it felt like the ocean was filling up the air. I ran beneath my umbrella to the subway station and barely made my 7:32 train.
    For once, there was a seat open and I dropped into it, wrapping up my umbrella and closing my eyes to think about everything I had to get done today. Some pricing research, a wall of meetings before lunch, and then a meeting with my staff.
    When I looked up and glanced at the paper the lady next to me was reading, every one of those plans fell away.
    Staring at me from the middle of Page Six was a picture of Max next to the headline, M AD M AX’S M ANY M ISTRESSES.
    “What?” I shot out involuntarily, leaning forward and not even caring that I was one hundred percent into the personal space of the girl reading the paper.
    “Can I see this?” I asked forcefully, and the woman handed the paper over like she thought I might be nuts.
    I quickly skimmed the story.
    Max Stella loves art and beautiful women. It’s no surprise to any of us that his (worst-kept) secret is his penchant for combining hobbies: photographing himself with his flavors of the week. Caught only a week ago with a stunning blonde in a bar, new pictures have leaked of Max devouring an equally delicious brunette. While most of the shots were, let’s just say, very too NSFW to reprint here, one face shot clearly identifies the venture capitalist’s “getting the business” partner as the Spanish starlet Maria de la Cruz, only days ago as the time stamp has it.
    Come on, Max. Can’t we just see a sex tape and get it over with?
    As I finished reading the story for probably the tenth time, the train pulled up to a stop and I shot up, stumbling from the subway car and wandering in a daze out to the street.
    After walking the last dozen blocks to our building, I wasn’t even a little surprised to find Chloe standing inside my office, waiting for me.
    With shaking hands, I held up the paper. “I needyou to explain what I’m seeing here. Is this just gossip? Who is this woman?”
    She stepped closer, handing me her phone. She had the browser open to Celebritini, which apparently had broken the story. At the top of the page was a picture I’d seen weeks ago, on the rooftop with Max. It was a picture of my hip, with his hand spread across my skin.
    Beside the picture of my obviously naked body was a picture of a woman’s face. She had dark hair and I would have no way of knowing what color her eyes were because her head was thrown back, eyes closed. At the bottom of the photo was a hint of hair of the man whose face was pressed against her neck.
    She was very obviously having an orgasm.
    “This photo was on his phone.” I scanned the story that outlined just how many women Max had pictures of. “Apparently there were a lot of pictures of other women.”
    Chloe reached for the pair of scissors on my desk. “I’ll be back later; seems I have an appendage to remove.”
    “He’s out of town.”
    She paused, taking a deep breath. “Well, at least that will save me from prison.”
    “What did Bennett say?”
    Chloe flopped down on my couch. “He said we should try to be circumspect. That we didn’t know the entire story. That there is a lot of bullshit in the press. He reminded me I thought he was sleeping with everyone in the office before we hooked up.”
    I pointed to the picture of his Spanish Starlet . “This story says this was the most recent of his photos leaked and that there were many others. And the one of me, the other one, was taken earlier this summer. So he’s been with her since then.”
    She didn’t respond. I stared at the wall, considered putting my fist through it, and then almost laughed at the image. Max could put a